The Tales of Trump Kingdom
by Leuny
Summary: Everybody knows the episode where Shinichi reappeared on the stage of a school play. What if the scenery changed - and it wasn't a simple school play any more, but something darker? Follow our main characters on their journey back! Updated sporadically.
1. Spade's Heart

_**Trump Kingdom**_

_Part 1: Spade's Heart_

Raise the Curtain!

"_One's concentration as a performer must remain centered on the action of which one is a part. For it is in truth only one's concentration on the imagined reality of the role that can force the audience's attention to that same place." ~Anonymous._

"_It doesn't matter where you are on the stage, just as long as you're there." ~author unknown._

**Disclaimer**: Nothing is mine, everything belongs to Gosho Aoyama. The scene is taken from Detective Conan Episode 190, 205, blah. I donot really know which episode it is in which country or which one counts for this disclaimer. It is however called **"The Desperate Revival ~The Black Knight~"** or _"Inochigake no Fukkatsu ~Kokui no Kishi~"_ (命がけの復活〜黒衣の騎士〜) and – as everything else except for the plot of this oneshot – belongs to Aoyama-sensei. I'm just playing around here, thanks.

I've included a scene transcription as the scene plays out in the episode (so you do not have to look it up again) which is going over directly into the story:

_It was a beautiful day; they had been on their way for about a day and had just made it past the first few villages that they were being held up. "Who goes there? Don't you know this is the Bridge Kingdom's princess, Heart?" the leader of the princess Heart's Life Guard demanded of the unknown knights who were blocking the carriage's way. The newcomers did not mean them well, he could tell by the way they were holding themselves already._

"_We know that already. We were ordered by the Master Cortet to abduct the princess. To us, it is better if our kingdoms continue this hatred of each other. Get out of the way!"_

_The head of the princess' Life Guard prepared to negotiate, so he was not ready for the other when he put his words into action immediately upon saying that. With a quick slash of his sword, the leader of the guards was put hors de combat, his followers rendered headless and, therefore, put out of commission with that one strike alone._

_The other man did not so much as bat an eye, as he rushed to the carriage and opened the door._

"_C'mon!" the attacker roughly pulled out the princess Heart, played by Ran, who let out a startled cry at being manhandled thusly._

_Her friend, Kazuha could be heard in the audience, but her voice seemed to come from far away nevertheless, "Ran-chan, use your Karate! You can take care of these freaks!"_

_Following these words, all of a sudden, one single black-colored feather fell down in the light beam breaking through the trees. All action halted abruptly and silence reigned over the clearing for one short eternity._

"_A crow's feather?" one of the attackers dared utter into the confusion that had a tight grip on his fellow travelers in that moment._

_More feathers fell, and it dawned on the attacking knights just who it might be that would appear on the scene next._

"_It can't be!" this shocked exclamation was followed by a black clad knight jumping right into the attackers, driving the group apart like the wind does with the carefully collected heaps of leaves in autumn. With that one action, he simultaneously brought down his sword and managed to incapacitate one of the attackers._

_The newly-arrived knight stayed crouched down as Ran looked him over curiously. Something felt different about that person..._

"_Th… The Black Cloaked Knight!" The teenage girl blinked bemusedly as one of the opposing knights shouted those words. Was that really one of her classmates' voices?_

_Ran could hear Kazuha calling from far away, "He's so cool!" but even that appeared to come from farther away than it had been earlier._

"_Damn! Retreat, retreat!" Why did even that voice sound a nuance different than any she had heard before? And what of the people playing her guards? Briefly – and, she hoped, inconspicuously –, she looked around, only to make out nothing but darkness all around her, the light of the light beams cancelling out her view of anything else from where she stood just then. Her eyes landed once more on the figure of the Dark Knight who was standing in a protective stance directly in front of her as the attackers fled the scene._

_Right. It was her turn now._

"_Not just once but twice! Who was it that saved my life again?" She tried to put as much feeling into these lines as she could. Even if she felt a little bit confused, she should not let the audience know._

_But then it got even stranger as no answer came from the knight in the short silence that followed. She plowed on regardless._

"_Oh, unnamed knight with your black cloak, if you will grant me my wish… Please take off that dark mask and show me your true face!"_

_Ran got goose bumps when the other still did not answer her, but turned around and in one smooth motion took a step towards her and put his arms around her shoulders and embraced her warmly, while she only managed a half-step back._

_What?_

_Out loud, the girl only managed a slightly strangled "Eh?"_

_She just knew something was wrong then. But even if she did not know who that was, calling him sensei would most probably not offend him. And, through all that confusion and fuzziness in her head, that was all she could think of to call him, really. "Sensei, this isn't written in the script…" she quietly whispered into his ear, feeling not only confused, but also a touch lost. She did not know what to do._

_Still, the unknown knight remained silent._

_There was some commotion happening off stage, in the audience and rather far away actually, though the two of them could not make out what was spoken. Again, whispering, Ran turned her head up a bit to look over the knight's shoulder towards the side of the stage where she could barely make out her friend from this new position. Whispering, she mouthed the following words to her friend, "Sonoko, what should I do now?"_

_Sonoko held up a sign that Ran could hardly read at the distance that she was._

"_Keep going" she read the words quietly to herself before once more forming words with her mouth, knowing that her friend would be able to read them from her lips "Are you sure it's ok?"_

_Sonoko nodded enthusiastically, which brought the image of a nodding dog into Ran's head for a second. It was actually kind of funny and Ran allowed herself to smile slightly, reassured, before she went on with what was obviously turning out to be a monologue, "Oh, might you be Spade?"_

_She broke away from him a bit, his arms still encircling her loosely, and put one hand over her heart. "Long ago, you were banned from this land by my father… but now you've become prince of Trump Kingdom." The princess-actress put her hands onto his shoulders, knowing what the script had in store for them at that moment. She felt a disturbing realization hit her, though, as she chanced another glance over his shoulder, wanting to reassure herself that Sonoko agreed with her choice of advancing the play a bit._

_That glance, however, did nothing to reassure her, as she noticed that there seemed to be real trees growing around the clearing, instead of her friend and their classmates standing at the edge of the stage. The stage itself was covered with earth. She froze._

_Where did the wooden floor go? What had happened? Her heart hammering in an uneasy rhythm in her ears, she stumbled over her next words for a moment, before deciding that she indeed wanted the play to restart and bring her back to the stage in the gym of her school. It was irrational, yes, but she did not believe her eyes and most assuredly did not want to find out they were somewhere else, so she went on with her text in the script, keeping her eyes on the dark blue mask of the knight hugging her and hoping adamantly that the trees and the earthen floor had just been an illusion – a trick of the eyes that the headlights had played her. Nothing real, nothing more than that._

"_If you have not forgotten about our childhood promise… Then please… please show me on these lips."_

It would have been hilarious, Ran thought to herself, how the masked person's body froze at those words. Had she not been feeling so decidedly out of her depth here, she would have laughed herself silly at that reaction. But she felt closer to breaking down into hysterical tears than to laughing because apparently she'd been transported somewhere else in the middle of a school play, somewhere unknown to her and she was standing there with a stranger hugging her.

Did she mention that it was a surreal situation yet?

Maybe she would even break down into hysterical laughter, which sounded like a good plan too.

As it was, she settled for clutching the other person closer to her and burying her head into his shoulder. In general, she was trying to shut out the extremely changed surroundings and the very real-sounding birds that she could hear and the wind that she could feel playing with her hair, all the while making a very determined attempt at finding a convenient hole to sink into.

All this time, her thoughts frantically chased one another in her mind. "Somewhere else! How- What- Not supposed to- In a forest! Where in the world-! How the-!" It took her about ten minutes to calm down and finally stop hanging onto the stranger as tightly as she had been.

When she loosened her hold on him a bit, she could feel his hand running comforting circles on her back, which it had apparently been doing for quite a while already, while the other one held her in an embrace, still. She also noticed that they were sitting on the floor – when had she sat down? – and that he was humming softly.

Like a shy animal, she chanced a look at the floor around her. Earth. With grass and flowers growing on it. Real earth, then. Her eyes wandered back to the knight's chest. The humming and the circles on her back had not stopped, but she could feel that the stranger was calmer – reassured, maybe? – having seen her take a peek at the world around her. She was by then a hundred percent sure that it was not Araide-sensei under the mask. She still did not know him, though, and that made her wary.

Cautiously, she edged away from him a bit – it did not do any good, she was still in his arms, after all, but it did calm her mind – and asked, "Who are you?"

Upon having said that, she felt him freeze once more, and at first she mistook it for the answer to her question before he got up swiftly, pulling her with him, and, after picking her up bridal style, he started running off into the woods. Over the din of the forest mixing together with his steps and looking over his shoulder (_again_), she could just make out indistinct shapes of people (_knights maybe?_) who had burst into the clearing they had just been resting in grow smaller and smaller in the distance. Angry shouting could be heard.

She decided that she did not want to know what these people had been up to (she had seen the swords they were carrying and brandishing angrily) and that she would trust the stranger.

For now.

**Change Of POV: Spade**

Again, his vision got blurry around the edges. He shook his head once more, having to fight off nausea each time that he did that. The teenager was annoyed at himself for getting himself shot – it made his immune system look decidedly appetizing to any and all bacteria, apparently, seeing as he was ill as a consequence and feeling quite sick at that very instant – and cursed his body for reacting like that for the nth time that day. It was absolutely no fun to be sick, and with how many times he spent ill and/or in bed, he felt almost justified in asking the bacteria, the state or the pope for compensation. Almost.

Ah, well.

Clearing his thoughts of anything and all trivial, he focused on the task ahead. Namely, he had disguised himself and would be playing the Dark Knight in that school play that Ran was participating in as well. He didn't even have to persuade Sonoko into letting him onstage at all. Upon sight he'd been immediately and enthusiastically ushered behind the stage by the self-proclaimed stage director herself. Sometimes he wondered what the gossipy girl was thinking that he was about to do with Ran.

It was just as well that he'd gotten into costume without anybody the wiser already before she'd caught sight of him. Like this, he'd only had to make a quick grab for the mask before she'd pushed him right behind the curtain. And here he was, now, waiting for his cue. It would probably be his turn soon, so he suppressed a sigh (Again, he would not be meeting Ran face-to-face… - he remembered the stern warning that Ai had given him right before he'd run off after having survived the change into his normal body anew) before he putting on the helmet (_Had it been that heavy before?_).

Right when he'd put it on, he saw a suspicious-looking person standing right in front of him who most decidedly had not been standing there before and he felt the world tip sideways. The other person was already in the motion of turning around towards him when Shinichi felt unconsciousness claim him. It was when he felt the black blurry parts around the edges of his eye sight close in, that Shinichi was pretty sure that this _was not supposed to happen_.


	2. Orchid's First

_**Trump Kingdom**_

_Part 2: Orchid's First_

Have A Look Behind The Curtain!

"_All the world's a stage and all the men and women are merely players." ~William Shakespeare._

"_Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me." ~George Bernhard Shaw._

**Disclaimer**: Nothing is mine, everything belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

**Continuation Of POV: Spade**

Shinichi had planned to trick Ran into thinking he wasn't Conan. What he hadn't counted on was waking up surrounded by trees, _real trees_, obviously in a forest somewhere, surrounded by cheerful bird-chirping and on soft, earthy ground. And he had thought nothing could shock him any more after having been transformed into Conan. Oh, how wrong he'd been.

With glassy eyes, he regarded his surroundings, still slightly dazed by the overall rather _sudden_ change in scenery. He'd been on a stage before, hadn't he? Well, technically not even on the stage itself, just behind the curtain, but that had been somewhere else entirely, hadn't it? How come he'd woken up _there_? Why had he fallen asleep in the first place? Drugs came to mind, as did his … illness and the feeling that something was simply _**off**_ somehow that he'd had on and off this whole week. It had – dare he say? almost _magically_ – disappeared.

Not quite believing he could rejoice about that yet, the skeptic moved to get up. Only to have his limbs at first completely refuse his brain's orders. Afraid, he moved his fingers, then his arms and held them up to his face. No, motor control was still there, his body just needed some time to reboot, it seemed. A relieved sigh made its way through his lips at that. For one moment – for one eternally short moment he'd truly thought he'd lost… ah well. No use pondering that now.

Wiggling his toes, he slowly got up, having learned his lesson about fast movements the hard way, namely: do not try them until you're sure you can stand on your own two legs. Sitting up, he sadly had to admit that the scenery hadn't changed at all. Great. Just where had he ended up this time? Not that mysterious transportation from behind stage curtains were his forte, exactly, however he really was curious by then to find out what exactly had happened. He'd never experienced this before. Technically, it wasn't even possible. Ah, well, in other words, it at least didn't fall into place with what… normal… people _thought_ was possible. Didn't mean it wasn't possible, see exhibit A) Edogawa Conan.

Alright, so he was in a forest. What to do first? The answer came to him with lightning speed. Civilization. He'd need to look for civilization. There he might be able to get answers. Hopefully. Maybe. Where in the world would he find civilization around here? Which direction should he start heading off in? Sighing to himself, he pondered the wisdom of just staying in one place and waiting for a random stranger to (perhaps even literally) stumble over him and of going off somewhere to some unfamiliar place with unknown dangers and people. The second option seemed far more … interesting, so he randomly decided on a direction and off he went. He refused to believe that it could possibly – depending on where he was – take days until he found signs of other people.

That wouldn't be someplace he had more than a fantastically slim chance of ending up in, right? His luck simply couldn't be that abysmal.

Right?

About five to six hours later had him seriously questioning his reasoning. And hate woods in general. Seriously, were trees the only living specimen around wherever "here" was? He was quite fed up with seeing green bushes and trees all around. Greenery in general was making him quite sick at this point and he had decided he'd climb the next slope that he found, if only so he could have a better view over… wherever he was. Hopefully, it wouldn't just show him some more of that lovely _forest_. The detective of the East had picked a way past one slope already, a decision made by coin-throw which was something he definitely wasn't repeating. It had led him there, grumbling about anything and everything green at a small clearing – somewhere in some kind of unknown forest.

A thought kept nagging at him though, having gotten into his brain some hours earlier, when he had still laughed it off as ridiculous. As for now, well… he wasn't a hundred percent sure about his conclusion any more, truth be told. But this couldn't be, right? This couldn't be – it couldn't be Aokigahara, could it now? The Sea of Trees that some, mostly superstitious, people liked calling the "Suicide Forest"? An involuntary shudder ran down his back at that thought. The Suicide Forest – he didn't want to have anything to do with that, regardless of him having solved various murder cases in the past. He wasn't superstitious, but some things just were better left alone, even the most curious detectives out there knew their limits. And to top it off, he was alone.

By himself off in a far-reaching, unfamiliar forest, maybe even in a land he didn't know. This seemed more like some kind of fantasy novel where the unwilling victim had been plunged into mysterious magic water which would then transport them somewhere else. Yeah, right. Honestly, he didn't know why he had to be stuck with two parents, both of whom had the complete and utter freedom of letting their imaginations run rampant more often than not. Thanks, but no thanks. The temporarily-returned detective didn't need that right then.

As for the matter of Aokigahara, well, this forest certainly seemed big enough. And with his luck…

Let it be said that it wouldn't be too big a stretch of imagination for him to have landed there, of all places possible.

But he hadn't run across any signs urging people to reconsider their actions or – heaven forbid – across belongings that people had left behind at all, so Shinichi was quite sure of the fact that it wasn't _that forest_ that he had managed to find himself in. Nevertheless, one small shred doubt lingered.

He decided to seek shelter for that day. The sun was already very far down and it would only be a matter of time until he'd be left in darkness. He didn't want to be out and about in an unknown forest in the dark, it was just common sense.

Not even the best detective in the world could have known what he was about to awaken to the next morning.

**POV: Princess Trisha**

What… where was she? Hadn't she just been at that party? What had happened? When she opened her eyes again, she could just blearily make out her surroundings. She seemed to be lying on a bed in a… hut? What?

Shutting her eyes tightly, she silently counted to ten in her head, before opening them once more. Yes, her first assessment of her surroundings seemed adequate. This definitely wasn't Akako-chan's place. First off, it by far didn't seem as… expensive… as the older girl's mansion had, secondly she was fairly sure that not one wall in the other girl's house was made entirely of wood. Where had she landed? How?

Slowly, she made to get up, only now noticing a faint headache making its way from her temples to her forehead. Ow.

Then all her thoughts were put on temporary hold as a motherly woman bustled into the room, immediately zooming in on her and all in all fussing about her. The only things she could make out from the onslaught of words that she was subjected to were "Princess Trisha", "Oh my goodness, everybody was soooooo worried!" and "What a nasty fall that must have been!"

Blinking owlishly up at to the old woman, Aoko wasn't sure what to do. Had she really just been addressed as "Princess Trisha"? What fall? She couldn't remember-

Then it hit her. The older woman was right. She _**had**_ fallen down. Somewhere. The only thing her mind was still conscious of was the sensation of _falling_, though. Again, this question was running through her head: What had happened? It seemed like a mantra, almost, the sentence kept reappearing in her thoughts so often.

It was disconcerting, to say the least, that she couldn't remember much of what happened in the span in-between _falling_ and… waking up there, wherever she was. She inquired as much from the woman once she found an opening in the other woman's speech winding down a little. "What do you mean, princess? Don't you remember me?" Her eyes widened immensely at that.

"Oh dear. Your head must be quite confused if you can't even remember your old personal maidservant! I shall send for the doctor at once and tell him that you have awoken! He might know what ails you and what to do about it!" With that, the old woman walked out the door briskly.

Personal maidservant? When had she…? Shaking her head, she put it off, figuring that she'd find out soon enough. Instead, she got out of bed, looked out the window, and made off into the main part of the house. Obviously, she wasn't hurt, other than for a small bump on her head, so she might as well take the chance and see where she had landed and what she could do in order to find Kaito.

Aoko was certain that once she met up with him, everything would work out fine. His luck was just like that. Nodding to herself, she determinedly and stealthily made her way out of the house. She could do stealth and sneaking, having proved so multiple times when she'd managed to sneak up on Kaito to surprise him.

The fact that it felt like he let her do so more often than not and her thusly having gained a competitive streak a mile wide for proving she was capable of sneaking up on him without him noticing had nothing to do with her sneaking skills being better than average.

**AN**: You might want to look up that creepy forest here (just fill in): http: slash slash en dot wikipedia dot org slash wiki slash Aokigahara Yes, it does exist. Yes, Aokigahara is also known as the "Sea of Trees" or the "Suicidal Forest". And for good reason! For suicidal people it is apparently the second-most-frequented place in the world (right after that bridge in San Francisco). Not that that is anything to be proud of – it is indeed a rather macabre kind of record.

It also seems that sometimes the people who go there to kill themselves don't clean up after themselves, or that local policemen don't find them or their belongings until years after the fact. *grimaces*

…

How did I end up with a horror forest in the middle of one of my MK/DC-crossover-fanfictions?

On another note entirely, it seems that the virus on my (normal) PC was quite successful in disabling me from posting any of my other fan fictions' chapters. Out of frustration, I have decided to continue this one. (Take that, virus! You won't get me down this easily!) I am sorry to say that I won't be updating **We Are Golden** any time soon. Nevertheless, I have decided to make that ff's chapters longer starting at chapter 8.

10.000 words worth of writing for all the faithful waiting you're doing!

I will try to get the third chapter of **Letter To Myself** up by the **01.07.**, though I won't promise anything at this point in time (I'm going abroad for two days and then coming back that weekend, so I might be too busy to do so on Sunday).

I'm hoping to get everything down from the other PC by mid-July, so I will most probably continue updating in August again (excepting ffs that are/will be written on another PC, like this one).

_**Thank you for everything, dear readers, and have a nice day!**_


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